This article was written by Janine Rubenstein and published by People on May 10th, 2026.
17-year-old Kiana Lee of San Diego, who recently took part in the 2026 Disney Dreamers Academy, runs a non-profit that’s bringing the power of STEM to students with disabilities.
In the midst of Deaf Awareness Week, one teen is going above and beyond to help level the playing field for students with disabilities.
17-year-old Kiana Lee recently traveled from her hometown of San Diego to Orlando as one of 100 high schoolers hand-picked to take part in the 19th year of Disney Dreamers Academy.
“We’ve done so much, we went to the parks and I got to meet so many amazing people like Malia Baker from Descendents,” she says of Disney’s weekend-long programming to celebrate and enrich teens who are making a positive impact on their communities. “It’s just a great time.”
Lee, who is deaf and uses hearing aids, earned the coveted opportunity thanks to the hard work she’s put in to not only excel academically, but to show up and create change for her peers and the deaf community.
“I’m representing us,” says Lee. “Sometimes as a deaf person, you’re often shunned or shut out because people don’t think you have the capability to do something because of my limitation, but I don’t want it to be a limitation.”
Along with teaching ASL to kids, Lee started her own non-profit, Sign Journey, to bridge the cultural gap between deaf and hearing students and to help make STEM learning more welcoming and inclusive for all.
“I want to show that these types of things aren’t barriers,” she says, “but instead they can actually enhance what you do and they can actually give you perspective and give you the potential to become so much more.”
One issue Lee is tackling: “Special education departments tend to be isolated,” she says of the the separation between students with disabilities and the larger school community. “I want [students with special needs] to continue being integrated into everyday activities, everyday classroom things, and get the opportunity to get engaged in STEM.”
Lee’s currently researching ways to enhance the deaf learning experience. “I’m doing like neuroscience research, studying how deaf individuals process language,” she says.
“We go into the lab and we use like ADGs (automatic data generators) to study how do their brains accommodate for language comprehension because it’s different than a hearing individual,” explains Lee. “And those are the types of things that can actually be used later on to develop new technology or to continue being integrated into everyday classrooms.”
The standout teen didn’t always see herself entering the tech space. “There weren’t really any people who were like me, I didn’t see any young deaf girls entering the field of STEM.”
That said, Lee’s dad is also deaf and since childhood “I always have been interested in hearing aids. Mine sucked growing up. I was like, ‘Well, why isn’t anybody making an effort to make that better?’ And that led me into the fields of technology and engineering.”
And now there’s no stopping her. “I have this spark inside of me that just continues to grow,” she says. “Especially now when I meet with the other Disney Dreamers and I see what they’re doing and I’m like, ‘well, that is definitely something that I find inspiring.'”
One such fellow Dreamer was Kofi Hair-Ralston, who after seeing significant unemployment in his Baltimore hometown, launched VenturEd a global opportunity platform that’s helped connect over 9,700 underrepresented young adults to jobs.
Says Hair-Ralston, “There’s a lot of other kids here at Disney Dreamers Academy like me, who are just trying to make a difference.”
